Dylann Roof et al: pseudo-terrorism and links in the chain of disorder

Dylann Roof, Michaels Adebowale and Adebolajo, Anders Breivik, David Copeland: pseudo-terrorism and links in the chain of disorder

 In the field of mental health we are used to the concept of the pseudo-symptom – a phenomenon which often provokes intense inter-professional disagreement which in turn leads both to rather equivocal clinical responses and to confusion for the patient who reports them.  Such symptoms – say auditory or tactile hallucinations - are real to the patient, in the sense that he or she believes they are happening (i.e. they are not fabricated in order to secure an actual or perceived benefit). But they are different, in a way which professionals are unable to describe objectively and instead generally intuit, from the “real” psychotic experiences of someone living with, say, schizophrenia. It is strange but true that it is possible to believe you are hearing voices (in the same way you may believe you are experiencing pain without actually experiencing pain) when you are not hearing voices as someone who is psychotically ill may well do.

In the same way, the benighted Dylann Roof and his brothers in arms, who visited their terrible violence on so many innocent, unsuspecting victims like a lightning bolt coming from a clear blue sky, may look like racist, religious, neo-Nazi or homophobic terrorists – and even support their actions with detailed, seemingly considered manifestos – but their mentality is qualitatively completely different from that of the true terrorist: the outcome of their behaviour may be indistinguishable in every way from the products of terrorism but there is no overlap in the essential psychology of the two groups.  The terrorist is mentally well but with an unshakeable attachment to his beliefs (a state of mind found in religious and political groups around the world): the pseudo-terrorist, on the other hand, is mentally not-well and has to import or internalise beliefs in order to shore up his sanity and stave off disintegration. 

Indeed, the actions of Seifeddine Rezgui, who murdered thirty or more holiday-makers on a Tunisian beach, have all the hallmarks of terrorism but faulty inferences from, if you like, symptoms can lead to a flawed understanding of the problem and in turn ineffective treatment or responses from governments.  A casual or predetermined reading of his grinning pose, sandwiched by a pair of Kalashnikovs, on the internet may well lead viewers to conclude that he was another in a long line of radical, extremist jihadists glorying in the imminent deaths of Western infidels.  But his fatuous smirk is the start of a trail leading to the essential barren emptiness of such young men which the true terrorist is so adept at filling with the simplistic, one-dimensional ideas characteristic of an extremist cult surfing the death instinct in the name, randomly chosen, of religion.  With the blood of his victims still staining the pale North African sand, analysis and compassion are pointless and insulting respectively but, as the relatives of Dylann Roof’s victims instinctively understood, raging against the deed should not shut out sorrow for the sad, destructive hollowness of the mind of the doer. 

Another feature of mental ill-health well-known to those in the business is that, in men especially, there are peaks of vulnerability to breakdown, or near-breakdown, throughout the lifespan.  They are probably highest in the mid- to late-teens, with smaller peaks in the mid-20s, middle-age and then later old age.  All of these all likely to be the consequence of subtle brain changes but life events probably play a greater part with aging, followed by a return to organic factors in the form of dementia in later life.  

When this susceptibility tips into frank illness, for example, schizophrenia, the developing ego is likely to go under, that is, flounder and weaken in the powerful currents of the process of the illness itself.  As time goes by, motivation, drive, self-care, and powers of organisation and even of cognition gradually fade.  Alongside this, so called positive features of the illness – hallucinations, strong delusional beliefs and so on – may become intrusive and dangerous, often leading to detention and enforced treatment.  These are the phenomena which families and professionals tend to notice because they lead to problems, mainly for the sufferer but for the public as well sometimes, which require intervention.

However, there may be other features in the background which are less obtrusive but nevertheless problematic, and it is these which can be picked out in the psychological landscape of the minds of young or youngish men, destabilised by a spike of vulnerability, who commit mass homicide.  And while what they do may be weighty, dramatic and seemingly brutally powerful, they often themselves come across before the event as fatuous and strangely pathetic, with egos which are at the same time bloated, porous and fragile. They are in the throes of infant or adolescent fantasies which are well past their use-by date and give rise to play but with real bullets – an anomaly which in a way explains the intransigence of the US gun lobby which assumes maturity on the part of shooters or aspiring shooters.

Whereas the preoccupations and potential targets of the sane or more developed terrorist are predictable and fixed – the infidel, the unbeliever, the imperialist crusader and so on - the possible targets of the not-quite-mad young man whose maturation has run into a developmental cul-de-sac are interchangeable and of no real consequence; hence Dylann Roof’s casual remark to a mixed-race friend that he might go and “shoot up a school”.  In practice, however, their inadequately defended egos will let in whatever narrative happens to be current and also take in globally publicised examples of group murder (Sunni-Shia retaliatory massacres, attacks on Jewish schools, Charlie Hebdo and so on), thereby being freed from the normal straight-jacket of taboo to re-enact events  which chime in with their murderous, infantile impulses. These are then laced with envy (actually a characteristic of frank terrorism as well) and carried along on an undercurrent of sexual symbolism, the spraying of bullets from the barrel of a gun being a surface manifestation of this. 

It is wholly understandable that, for example, leading black politicians in Charleston say that Roof’s actions were the product of lingering racist hatred, the survivors of Copeland’s nail-bomb in the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho portrayed his killings as the consequence of extreme homophobia, and the family of Lee Rigby understood his assassination on a street in Woolwich to be a manifestation of grotesque religious fanatacism.  It isn’t that they are wrong – in the same way that it is not wrong to say, for example, that the majority of street robberies in London are carried out by black men – their error lies in choosing one particular variable to the exclusion of all the others that also apply. 

The primary condition of Roof, Breivik and others is their hollow grandiosity and their flight from horror vacui which they are compelled to address by introjecting ideas which are consonant with their infantile rage. Untenable turmoil which in others would lead to madness takes them to absurd extremes. Their actions are those of someone who would otherwise have gone mad. They are either pre-mad or post-mad, their egotism unmoderated by the altruism of madness.